Philosopher’s Stone, Apparatus

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By Brad Engler

Drones and samples abound on Apparatus, the second album recorded by Gareth Mitchell under the name Philosopher’s Stone. The sounds are mostly guitar based and feature varied effects, which produce about an hour of boring, uneventful air filler.

If the feeling one is supposed to get from this album is monotony, I suppose it does its job well. The sounds go nowhere, and the tracks are all moderately similar from one to another. If you’re considering a lobotomy, you might want to save yourself the pain of eating hospital food and just go find this album.

Sure, I’ll admit that the intent of the music is not to entertain on a normal pop/rock/anything else basis, but there are albums that just wander through noise without beats that can keep my attention, and even impress me with their general tone and feeling. One recent example of this was the latest from rhBand, which kept my attention even through its lengthy tracks. This disc doesn’t do that.

After being mildly intrigued for the first minute, it just seemed to just melt into oblivion and not give me any feeling of anything. Perhaps the point just slipped past my potentially uninformed mind, or perhaps the point of the album is deeply rooted in nihilism, and hence, wasn’t supposed to mean anything anyway.